Higher Education (England) Regulations Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateGareth Snell
Main Page: Gareth Snell (Labour (Co-op) - Stoke-on-Trent Central)Department Debates - View all Gareth Snell's debates with the Department for Education
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI will give way. Come on! The more the merrier, frankly. We know what our policy is. Labour’s policy is utterly flawed.
I thank the Secretary of State for taking interventions. She is making a very spirited—albeit, in my opinion, flawed—argument that somehow because tuition fees went up at the same as time student numbers went up, one is linked to the other. How does she square that interpretation of the facts with the situation in my constituency, which has a nursing school where the conversion from bursary to tuition fees has seen a reduction in numbers of 33%, and nationally it has fallen by a quarter? If the Secretary of State is correct, surely the increase in tuition fees for nurses should have led to the number of applications skyrocketing?
The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a case that is fundamentally flawed. He is desperately scrabbling around, trying to find some alternative facts to cover up, with a little fact fig leaf, the reality that more disadvantaged young people are going to university, and more young people are going to university.